Photobucket Rises Again

by Elyse Kent
November 1, 2013

[ibimage==24152==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-center]

Back in May, at a press conference in New York, Yahoo unveiled a revamped version of Flickr that gave users 1 TB of free storage and allowed them to upload full-resolution photos. “The look and feel here is about photos and being unbounded,”Yahoo (YHOO) Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer said at the time. “Photos make the world go round. We want to make Flickr awesome again.”
 
Early reviews were largely positive. David Pogue (then of the New York Times, now of Yahoo), called the new Flickr a “gigantic improvement” and raved about the “insane, historic, vast amount of space.”
 
But six months later, awesomeness has proven elusive. According to ComScore data, in May 2013, at the time of Mayer’s press conference, Flickr had 27.3 million multiplatform monthly unique users in the U.S. By September, those numbers had dipped slightly to 26.2 million.
 
In the meantime, Flickr appears to be losing ground to at least one of its rivals. In September, for the first time in eons, according to ComScore data, photo-sharing Photobucket caught up and narrowly topped Flickr, pulling in 26.4 million users.
 
Call it a comeback.
 
Photobucket, which is based in Denver, launched in 2003—one year before Flickr. In 2007, Rupert Murdoch bought the company to add it to News Corp.’s (NWSA)then-growing social media portfolio, which also included Myspace. Things did not go swimmingly. In 2010, Murdoch sold Photobucket to the Seattle-based startup Ontela. The following year, he sold Myspace to a Beverly Hills-based advertising network called Specific Media. Singer and actor Justin Timberlake has an ownership stake in the company.
 

Jobs at Photobucket

Colorado startup guides

LOCAL GUIDE
Best Companies to Work for in Denver & Boulder
LOCAL GUIDE
Coolest Tech Offices in Denver & Colorado Tech
LOCAL GUIDE
Best Perks at Colorado Tech Companies
LOCAL GUIDE
Women in Colorado Tech